The further and continuing adventures of the girl who sat in the back of your homeroom, reading and daydreaming.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Adventures Of Mom X

My phone started making the text-message "ding!" about 0500: Inattentive Rehab, Inc. had sent Mom to the nearest hospital (about a block away).

Nope, she hadn't slugged her roommate or arranged to have the TV go out the window; her heart rate had gone way up!

So they get her to St. Nearby, where the docs check her out and decide A) she will be staying until the weather is better and B) elevated heart rate was anxiety. Slowed right down once she was in a place with sufficient staff -- or at least staff sufficiently involved in the job.

You'd've been anxious, too. The issues I mentioned earlier and called the place about? They'd just shined me on and done nothing at all. Just as they did when my sister called before me and my brother called after. You don't do this; you do not ignore a patient who cannot even get out of bed unaided. That's way past the loud TV or too-hot room.

When my brother arrived at St. Nearby Hospital, Mom's asked him to find a different place for rehab.

There is another inpatient rehab place not too far away and my siblings and I will be checking it out very carefully. We may have to take shifts being there, just to keep 'em honest.

14 comments:

If you don't mind, I would like to give you a little information from a medical person's point of view. I have literally been inside of hundreds of these centers in three different states, so I know what I am talking about.

Rehab centers are just nursing homes where patients can get physical therapy. These places merely house hundreds of people, and are mostly staffed with a very minimum of people.

These people are overworked, and many of the patients there are long term residents and are perpetually neglected and ignored. Let me illustrate: The front hallway (closest to the entrance) is where these places put the patients who are relatively healthy and well cared for. The reason for this, is so when the relatives who visit frequently don't see that their relatives are being treated poorly. The farther you get from the entrance, the worse it gets.

The patients farthest from the entrance are ignored, and frequently allowed to lie in their own filth-filled diapers.

To make sure that your mother isn't one of them, you need to come by often and unexpectedly. Make yourself a royal pain in their butts.

When you visit, take a notepad and pen and let them see you writing things down. Question everything that's not right whether it directly affects your relative or not.

Bottom line: The better the care your relative receives, the sooner she will be out of their. That is your motivation and, by being a pain in the ass, you'll make it their priority to help her heal and get out of there.

(Interesting: The Word Verification for my comment is "medico". Are the planets in celestial alignment or something?)

My wife had the exact experience with her mother's care. The director of the facility learned not to ignore her. In a nutshell, be aggressive. Mention the words, lawsuit, and find out if they have an investigative TV channel. Here we have "Channel 12 is on your side."

They LOVE to come out and shine light into these places. All they need is permission.....

As someone else who has been there and seen that (with my mother and with my wife's,) I would ask if St. V's Heart Hospital suggested or recommended or is connected with the Rehab Center? If so, get in THEIR faces for directing your mother there and tell them if it's found that they had knowledge of the care that this place would provide, they'll also be one of the defendants in any suit.

My mom complains about coworkers ignoring their patients like that...she works at a surgical rehab center in Arlington, TX (the home of Jerry's Bowl tourists sledding down unplowed black ice and snow roads in their rental cars). Every time I've gone to see her at work she is literally running from one room to another while the other nurses meander like terrified foreign student drivers in the left lane...

"I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions."